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Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
The conversation continues, indeed! Fresh off the Finovate team’s return from FinovateEurope 2025, we’re dropping a pair of Finovate podcasts that you might have missed.
First up is Finovate VP and Podcast host Greg Palmer’s discussion about AI, data apps, and FinovateEurope with Plotly European Sales Director Andy Wisbey. Second, Greg sits down with Portage Capital Solutions Partner and Co-Head Devon Kirk to talk about the current investment climate for fintechs and what to expect this year.
Andy Wisbey (LinkedIn), European Sales Director with Plotly, talks with Finovate Podcast host Greg Palmer about AI, data apps, and the recently-concluded FinovateEurope conference in London. Episode 247.
Founded in 2013 and headquartered in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, Plotly enables organizations to collaboratively develop and deploy apps in secure, scalable, managed environments.
The company’s flagship solution, Dash Enterprise, is a leading data app platform for Python. With more than 20 million downloads a month, Plotly’s technology empowers companies across the Fortune 500 to control, customize, and collaborate on data-driven decision-making. Plotly was a Bronze sponsor of FinovateEurope 2025.
Greg Palmer interviews Devon Kirk (LinkedIn), partner and co-Head of Portage Capital Solutions, about the current investment landscape, IPO and M&A predictions for the year, and what to expect in 2025. Episode 246.
Portage Capital Solutions is an international investment firm that specializes in fintech and financial services. Founded in 2016 and headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Portage teams up with companies across all stages to provide flexible capital, as well as a global network of investors, commercial partners, advisors, and value creation experts.
Most recently, Portage announced its support of open source financial infrastructure provider Formance. The firm co-led a $21 million Series A funding round with PayPal Ventures in January.
Catch up with Finovate VP and host of the Finovate Podcast Greg Palmer as he interviews some of the most interesting entrepreneurs, analysts, and thought leaders in fintech today.
In recent podcast episodes, Palmer and his guests have covered topics including the emerging regulatory environment in Europe, the outlook for cryptocurrencies, the opportunities in conversational banking, and the challenge of financial inclusion for female entrepreneurs in the Global South.
Will Martino (LinkedIn), President and Co-Founder of Kadena, talks with Finovate podcast host Greg Palmer about crypto, the SEC, and what shifting regulations mean for the fintech industry. EP 245.
Founded in 2016, Kadena is a scalable Layer 1 Proof of Work (PoW) blockchain. The technology is purpose-built to support the demand of businesses and traditional financial institutions.
Greg Palmer sits down with Janusz Mieloszyk (LinkedIn) and Lukasz Gajewski (LinkedIn) from FinovateFall Best of Show winning company Nest to talk about their partnership with Efigence, conversational banking, and the future of customer service. EP 244.
The first AI-enhanced bank in Poland, Nest caters to both entrepreneurs and individuals with a comprehensive suite of innovative payment methods and personalized banking services.
Rory Tanner (LinkedIn), Head of UK Affairs with Revolut, talks with podcast host Greg Palmer about neobanks, predictions for fintech and financial services in 2025, and a preview of FinovateEurope. EP 243.
A neobank and fintech platform, Revolut offers multi-currency accounts, international money transfers, debit and virtual cards, as well as stock and cryptocurrency trading. Founded in 2015, the company serves more than 50 million customers around the globe.
Greg Palmer and Mary Ellen Iskenderian (LinkedIn), President and CEO of Women’s World Banking, discuss the challenges of expanding credit for women entrepreneurs in the Global South and how fintechs can help. EP 242.
Women’s World Banking is an international non-profit organization dedicated to ensuring the future of economically empowered women. To date, the organization has help provide 14 million women in emerging markets with access to transformative financial products and services.
2025 is here in earnest and we’re looking forward to another year of exciting and insightful interviews from Finovate VP Greg Palmer and the Finovate Podcast!
Before we get this year’s conversations under way, here are a handful of podcast discussions from the final weeks of 2024 that you might have missed during the holiday rush.
Shannon Saccocia (LinkedIn), Chief Investment Officer with Neuberger Berman Private Wealth (NBPW), talks with Finovate VP and podcast host Greg Palmer about the opportunities and challenges for fintechs in the private wealth market. EP 241.
As Chief Investment Officer with NB Private Wealth, Saccocia works with investment leadership across Neuberger Berman to establish market views, asset allocation, and portfolio recommendations for NBPW clients. Saccocia also leads the NBPW investment platform to enable comprehensive delivery of the firm’s investment capabilities.
Greg Palmer sits down with Lark Davis (LinkedIn), cryptocurrency enthusiast and founder of The Crypto Lark, to explore where cryptocurrencies stand in 2025 and what’s coming next. EP 240.
Davis’s YouTube videos explore the satirical side of the news along with fact-filled reviews and interviews. His channel, The Crypto Lark, provides continuous updates on the cryptocurrency markets, bitcoin, blockchain, and the future of technology. Davis is also author of Wealth Mastery, a crypto newsletter featuring market analysis and insights.
Long-time investor and operator Kamran Ansari (LinkedIn) of Kapital Ventures joins the Finovate Podcast for a high-level examination of the fintech ecosystem heading into 2025 and shares his insights on where the industry is going from here. EP 239.
Ansari is venture capitalist and operator involved with a sizable number of innovative technology and fintech companies including Venmo, Azimo, and Braintree. As a private investor, Ansari has participated in funding for firms ranging from Facebook to Coinbase. In addition to his work with Kapital Ventures, Ansari is a venture partner with VC firm Headline.
Looking for some entertaining and insightful listening this holiday week? Greg Palmer and the Finovate Podcast have you covered!
This week the Finovate blog is sharing Greg’s conversations with seven of the eight Best of Show winning companies from FinovateFall 2024. From discussions about the growing importance of innovation in helping banks and other FIs meet ever-changing compliance requirements to the challenge of call-center security and defending against AI fraud, this latest round of interviews from the Finovate Podcast share insights and accomplishments from some of fintech’s finest.
“FinovateFall’s Best of Show winners come from different backgrounds and contain a wide range of solutions, but they all have one thing in common: they were able to capture the attention of our audience in a very competitive landscape,” podcast host Greg Palmer said. “Hear more of their stories and find out why they’re worthy of your attention too.”
Greg Palmer and Neepa Patel of Themis talk about compliance administration and how fintechs and financial services companies can avoid becoming a target for regulators. EP 238.
Greg Palmer interviews Rithwik Pattikonda of CardLift on payments via browser extensions. EP 237.
Podcast host Greg Palmer talks with Daniel and Joseph Ahn of Delfi on the dangers of balance sheet risk and its macroeconomic impact. EP 236.
Greg Palmer and Bancography’s Steven Reider discuss the importance of physical branches and making sure they are in the right places. EP 235.
Greg Palmer talks about call-center security and AI-based fraud with Illuma’s Milind Borkar. EP 234.
Credit Mountain’s Nathan Pinto talks about the “warm decline” and relationship-building with podcast host Greg Palmer. EP 233.
Greg Palmer and Eko’s Mart Vos discuss a new approach to bringing investing capabilities inside FIs. EP 232.
The conversation continues with Greg Palmer, host of the Finovate Podcast. This week, we share three of Greg Palmer’s latest podcast interviews with leaders, innovators, and analysts in fintech and financial services.
Elizabeth Osborne, Chief Operations Officer at Great Lakes Credit Union (GLCU), and Greg Palmer talk about successfully onboarding third-party fintechs, from strategy to selection to implementation. EP 231.
Osborne is an experienced operations and information technology leader with a background in both the credit union and banking industries. In her role as COO for GLCU, Osborne oversees areas such as technology, digital, contact center, deposit operations, payments, and PMO.
Max Grande, VP of Vertical Market Solutions at Onbe, and Greg Palmer discuss why you should be thinking about B2C payments. EP 230.
Onbe is a Chicago, Illinois-based fintech that manages and modernizes both consumer and workforce disbursements for corporate clients. The company’s platform powers a suite of turnkey, managed distribution solutions that enable clients to outsource their entire B2C disbursement operation.
Greg Palmer talks with Howard Xiao, Head of Partnerships at VGS, about payments, security, and the importance of staying flexible as an innovator. Ep 229.
As Head of Partnerships at VGS, Xiao leads the global partnership team, managing both VGS’ Payments Partners Channel and Alliance Partners.
VGS is a universal vault that supports the storage and transmission of payment credentials for its business customers around the world. The San Francisco, California-based company demoed its technology at FinovateSpring 2022.
Summer’s officially over. But you’ve still got plenty of time to catch up on episodes of the Finovate Podcast that you might have missed while on vacation or just taking a break from the fintech buzz.
EverBank is a nationwide specialty bank that serves both consumer and commercial clients. A pioneer in online banking, EverBank is headquartered in Jacksonville, Florida.
Fintech Sandbox offers entrepreneurs free access to data and resources in order to build their early-stage fintech solutions via its Data Access Residency program. Fryer is Executive Director.
Finovate Podcast host Greg Palmer interviews Jeff Trammell of Merchants & Marine Bank on the issue of cannabis banking and community banks. As a COO, Trammell offers his perspective on implementing new programs. Ep 225.
Headquartered in Pascagoula, Mississippi, Merchants & Marine Bank is a community bank that has served customers in the Gulf Coast region of the U.S. for more than 120 years.
Author of Web3 in Financial Services, Martins’ book examines the transformative potential of Web3 in the financial services space.
Alex Harris of Fiat Ventures shared his 2024 mid-year review this summer. In this podcast conversation with host Greg Palmer, Harris handed out a few tips for founders and gave his prediction for what’s next for the fintech industry. Ep 223.
Headquartered in San Francisco, Fiat Ventures is an emerging VC focused on supporting the next generation of market-leading, early-stage fintech companies. Harris is Co-Founder and General Partner.
The conversation continues with Greg Palmer and the Finovate Podcast. Over the past few weeks Greg has interviewed the CEOs and founders of companies that won Best of Show at FinovateSpring in May. Check out Greg’s first round of interviews.
This week we’re sharing the second round of Greg’s interviews with our FinovateSpring Best of Show winners. Enjoy insights on AI in banking, AI in small business lending, and the future of financial wellness, debt collection, and credit-building.
Greg Palmer interviewed Maya Mikhailov, CEO of SAVVI AI, on the importance of bringing concrete value to banks through AI. Episode 222.
“Prior to starting SAVVI, I ran an AI division at Synchrony Financial, where we built AI products for the banking and credit teams. And since leaving Synchrony, I was really on a mission to get AI and to get machine learning into more teams’ hands, to let them use this powerful technology and tool to accomplish their business goals.
Because, frankly, we really saw it working. And now it was a question of ‘we need more people to be using this because it is such a powerful tool to turn data into decisions.’ And that was the genesis behind SAVVI: to be a tool that helps any bank or fintech build and launch their own goal-driven use cases without the need for heavy resources, specialists, or complicated integrations.”
Founded in 2021, SAVVI AI helps banks, credit unions, and fintechs build, launch, and manage AI apps in minutes with its patented Practical AI platform. SAVVI AI’s technology enables financial services companies to innovate in the AI space without needing data scientists, pre-existing data, or a core integration. SAVVI is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois.
Watch Savvi AI’s Best of Show winning demo from FinovateSpring 2024.
Greg Palmer and Gwyneth Borden, CEO of Remynt discussed the future of debt collection and credit-rebuilding. Episode 221.
“Remynt empowers consumers to rebuild credit while resolving delinquent debt. What does that mean? (We) are a debt-buying collector, buying non-performing charge-offs. We are also collecting on them on contingency from banks, credit unions, and fintechs.
I got into this space in a way you would not expect: I came in from a vantage point of having experienced delinquency and charge-off. (I was) looking at everything that’s wrong with how debt collection works and how the incentives are misaligned between what the creditor of debt buyers would like and what the consumer needs.”
Founded in 2022 and headquartered in San Francisco, California, Remynt is a digital-first debt and credit recovery company that enables creditors to recover revenue from non-performing delinquencies. At the same time, Remynt gives consumers the opportunity to resolve debt on their own terms using a customer-centric, resiliency-oriented approach.
Watch Remynt’s Best of Show winning demo from FinovateSpring 2024.
How is AI changing the nature of SMB loan origination? That is the topic that Greg Palmer and Lukas Haffer, CEO and Co-Founder of Cascading AI, discuss in this Finovate Podcast conversation. Episode 220.
“My background is deep in the banking sector. I spent my whole career building, maintaining, and developing core banking systems. That’s not a career I can recommend to anyone; core banking systems are a pain. But it did give me a pretty solid understanding how the underlying IT infrastructure of a bank really works.
You pair that with two years of machine learning and AI research at Stanford and you get a pretty unique combination of skills to go back into the banking sector and automate a lot of the manual repetitive tasks that people used to do on top of our software. Now, with the advent of large language models, you really can automate.”
San Francisco, California-based Cascading AI is the world’s first AI-powered loan origination system that reduces 90% of the manual tasks involved in small business and commercial lending. The company won Best of Show for a demo of its AI Loan Assistant, Sarah, which is capable of doing the work of a 30-person lending team.
Watch Cascading AI’s Best of Show winning demo from FinovateSpring 2024.
“We are an infrastructure platform that’s really leading the modernization of credit data and credit data transmission,” Widhalm said in his Finovate Podcast conversation earlier this month. “There’s a significant amount of value to be uncovered within the ecosystem right now, specifically around credit data, and that’s what Bloom has set out to do.”
Headquartered in New York City and founded in 2016, Bloom Credit is a B2B credit data infrastructure platform. The company is building the next generation of rails for “all things credit data,” including transmission and compliant storage. Bloom’s technology helps facilitate the extension of affordable credit to the millions of consumers who are either subprime borrowers or have thin/no file with major credit agencies.
Watch Bloom Credit’s Best of Show winning demo from FinovateSpring 2024.
Most recently, Greg Palmer sat down with Kalyani Ramadurgam, CEO of Kobalt Labs, to discuss third-party regulations, the rise of AI, and the broader regulatory environment for fintechs, banks, and financial services companies. Episode 219.
“We automate all things third party diligence,” Ramadurgam explained. “When I say third party diligence that usually includes everything from vendor risk assessment all the way to monitoring, as well as partner and merchant risk assessment – whether you’re a partner bank or a fintech that’s looking to do business with new entities.”
New York City-based Kobalt Labs enables FIs to accelerate and fortify compliance operations. The company’s technology also provides automatic alignment with the latest regulations in privacy, lending, money movement, BSA/AML, ACH, and more. At FinovateSpring this year, Kobalt Labs demoed its AI-powered co-pilot that streamlines this process. The company was founded in 2023.
Watch Kobalt Labs’ Best of Show winning demo from FinovateSpring 2024.
What challenges are small and medium-sized businesses facing when it comes to getting the capital they need when they need it? What role does technology – especially enabling technologies like automation and AI – play in helping make it easier for entrepreneurs and SMBs to access critical financing?
This week, Finovate VP and host of the Finovate Podcast Greg Palmer spoke with Marius Silvasan, CEO of eCapital, to discuss these and other issues important to small businesses and the financial services companies that serve them.
“SMBs in this current market are under pressure,” Silvansan explained in his Finovate Podcast interview. “They are challenged. And the reason behind that is we’ve come from an environment in which inflation is coming down, but has been high over the last year-and-a-half. We’ve come from an environment in which borrowing costs were near zero – and they’ve increased substantially over the last several years. And the labor market has been very tight, so it’s been tough for SMBs to hire, it’s been tough for SMBs to retain qualified personnel. So that’s made the environment for SMBs quite challenging over the several years.”
Headquartered in Miami, Florida, eCapital helps small and medium-sized businesses secure the financing they need in order to grow. Founded in 2006, eCapital offers a wide range of financing solutions including freight and invoice factoring, payroll funding, asset-back lending, equipment refinancing, and lines of credit.
The conversation continues with Finovate VP and host of the Finovate Podcast Greg Palmer!
In recent episodes of the Finovate Podcast, Greg Palmer has discussed a number of key topics in fintech and financial services. These topics include the current state of venture capital funding, the opportunities presented by new technologies like AI and faster payments, and a look at the current challenges faced by credit unions. Catch up on the latest from Greg and the Finovate Podcast below!
Greg Palmer sits down with Pete Cherecwich, President of Asset Servicing at Northern Trust, to discuss the new technologies available to financial institutions and how FIs can push their tech stack forward.
Greg Palmer and Bain Capital Venture Partner Sarah Hinkfuss talk about the current state of venture capital funding and the best opportunities for investment in fintech.
Greg Palmer interviews Jean Pesme, Global Director of Finance at the World Bank, to discuss the impact of fast payments on the world economy, including the role of the World Bank’s Project FASTT.
Greg Palmer talks with Brian Lee, CEO of Landings Credit Union, on the role of emerging technologies in helping credit unions better serve their members and grow deposits.
Join Greg as he talks about the next generation of investment and wealth management content with Salman Hussain of Zeed, the value of flexibility in core banking with Richard Weston of Tuum, and the challenge of identity theft, deep fakes, and the escalating AI arms race with Gal Haselkorn of Corsound.ai.
Greg Palmer interviews Salman Hussain, co-founder of Zeed. The company enables retail investors to engage with financial content by leveraging interactive AI. Zeed’s technology also enables issuers to deploy these AI-based tools to educate and grow their retail investor base. Demo video.
Greg Palmer talks with Richard Weston, Sales Director with Tuum, on the latest innovations in core banking technology. With a strong focus on the U.K. and the Nordics, Tuum is a next generation core banking software provider that helps banks modernize their systems, open new revenue streams, and build new business models. Demo video.
Greg Palmer catches up with Corsound AI CEO Gal Haselkorn to discuss cutting-edge developments in voice intelligence and deepfake detection. Corsound AI, headquartered in Tel Aviv, Israel, offers a real-time deepfake detection solution that provides immediate threat mitigation for a robust defense against emerging security threats. Demo video.
A part of Landings Credit Union for nearly a decade, Lee has spent the last four years as CEO. He started as CFO of the Arizona-based financial institution and, before that, worked as both a regulator and in public accounting. Founded in 1953 as “Tempe Schools Credit Union,” Landings Credit Union today has more than 15,000 members and assets of more than $238 million.
Last year Landings CU received the Dementia Friendly business designation, which ensures members that credit union staff are trained to both recognize and support individuals with Alzheimer’s disease or dementia. “In Arizona we are the fastest growing state for new cases for Alzheimers,” Lee explained, “so it’s a big deal here for us.”
This year, the financial institution garnered national recognition for its commitment to financial inclusion, earning the Juntos Avanzamos designation. The designation recognizes the work done by credit unions to serve and empower Hispanic, Latino, and immigrant communities. A national network launched in 2015, the Juntos Avanzamos program has a presence in 29 states, serving more than 12 million consumers at 141+ credit unions in the U.S.
In their Finovate podcast conversation, Palmer and Lee talk about using technology to bring new projects to life in the context of these recent successful outreach efforts. “How can we comb through our data and find these new data points that we’re looking for, aggregate (them), and say ‘Let’s be the ones who are going out and reaching out to people’,” Lee explained. “Whether from our own data or community data that’s out there: how do we use that to be able to serve more people?”
Check out Episode 213 of the Finovate Podcast and the rest of Greg Palmer’s conversation with Landings Credit Union CEO Brian Lee.
